Both Sides
by L-chan
Summary: The time has come for Yukito to accept that life as he knows it is over. One-shot.


L-chan's notes:  Allow myself to challenge... myself.  This is my entry to a challenge I posed over on livejournal.  The topic: Goodbye.  Please read, review, and/or send pudding.  I'm not picky.

Disclaimer: Card Captor Sakura is the property of CLAMP, not me, so pfft.

Both Sides

(A One-Shot Yukito POV)

I stared into the mirror, feeling a knot instantly twist my stomach as I consciously avoided my own eyes.  Instead I focused on everything else reflected in the looking glass—the perfectly made bed, the window with its blue-striped curtains, a framed drawing of the sakura trees that lined the street in front of my house.  Touya had sketched it especially for me.  It was mine like nothing else was.  Nothing here really belonged to me.

Not even me.

Soon, though, it wouldn't matter anymore.

Now I looked at my shirt, all starched white cotton and neatly done-up buttons.  Laying against the fabric was the green tie I'd worn in hopes of impressing my literature professor.  She probably hadn't even noticed, but if I was going to earn a position as her assistant, I needed to look dependable and deserving.  Maybe that wasn't going to matter, either.  I didn't really know yet.

I hated being in the dark.

Everyone was tiptoeing around the issue.  I could practically hear the constant stream of whispered conversations going on behind my back, but that was my fault, too.  I didn't ask for the specifics.  I didn't want to know.  I was too afraid.

So, the darkness was of my own creation, but that didn't mean I liked it.

I finally raised my eyes enough to see them looking back at me in the mirror.  They should have been hazel.  I was supposed to have the same eyes as my grandmother who never existed.  But now, the hazel was obscured by silver.

_What do you want to know?_

The words echoed in my head, sounding much like my own voice, if I had a cold and was in a really bad mood.  "Yue?" I said stupidly.

_You were expecting someone else?_

He didn't speak to me often, if he could help it.  Only when it was necessary.

_You don't speak to me, either.  _

He had a point there.  Ignoring each other seemed to be our way of dealing with the situation.  We gave each other as much space as possible, considering we had to share the same body.  And I'd convinced myself that, if I didn't talk to him, then he wasn't there.  That he wasn't _me_.  That Yue was just this person I heard about from time to time.

Yeah.  That didn't really work.

_You're worried._

He was the master of the obvious, as well, and he had a knack for making me feel inferior.  "What's going to happen tomorrow?"  The words slipped out on their own, and I wondered if he'd had anything to do with that.

_We'll be properly joined._

"I know."  I had to talk out loud, to keep his thoughts separate from mine.  And I turned away from the mirror, because it was disturbing to see someone else looking at me through my own eyes.  "But then what?"

I was met with silence.  He knew what I was thinking.  He was just going to force me to say it.

"What's going to happen to _me?"_

Still no answer.

"Yue?"  Again, stupidly.  

_I don't know._

Was that supposed to make me feel better?  "Why not?"

I could feel him pause deliberately before he answered me.  And when he did, he didn't.

_This was only supposed to be a temporary arrangement._

I already knew that.  Everyone had explained that much to me—Sakura, Kerberos, Eriol, and Touya.  Yue and I couldn't stay separate forever.  Tomorrow, the two halves would become one.  That was how it was meant to be.  And I would no longer exist.  Everything I'd been through, everything I'd thought or experienced, all the joy and hope and love... it would all disappear.  I'd lived my short life in blissful ignorance, only to find that I'd never really lived at all.

_No.  You _are_ those things.  The better parts of me.  The parts I refused to be.  They will never disappear._

"But they will be different."  I would be different.  That's why I was afraid.  I didn't want anything to change.

_I will change, too.  How do you think I feel, knowing I'll have to smile again?  That I'll have to laugh and be friendly?  It's unsettling._

If he was trying to make me feel better, it wasn't helping.  It only made me realize how little I knew about him, whereas he knew everything about me.  If I could just understand who he was—

Suddenly a gate opened, flooding my brain, making it pound as my senses were filled with memories and emotions from a time I never knew.  Yue showed me his life in quick flashes of images or snippets of sounds.  These things should have been foreign to me, but they were almost familiar, though still just beyond my grasp.  I could feel... delicate feathers against my back, and long, unbound hair tickling my skin, and a strong, comforting hand touching—

It all stopped, just as suddenly as it started.

_That is who we are._

It was too much for me to understand.  Where did I fit into all of this?

_You are me.  And I am you.  _

I wanted to be reassured by this.  I wanted to believe that my life wouldn't be over, that it would continue... that what I'd been through wouldn't seem like a dream, an illusion of something that was never meant to be real at all.

I'd always been so unaffected by life.  I'd been happy.  I'd been protected.  I'd been naïve.  Even these last few months, knowing the truth, I'd still been convinced that nothing would have to change.  And, now, time had run out.

It had to be this way.  I knew that.  But I was still afraid.    

_Everything will be all right.  The mistress has said so.  Don't you trust her?_

I did.  I trusted Sakura.  I knew she wouldn't let me go.

I had to believe in her.  I had to believe that everything would be all right.

There were still a few hours left.  A few hours to spend alone in this house, alone with my thoughts and my life.  Time to reflect and accept.

Tomorrow, I would be able to say goodbye to everyone.

Tonight, I had to say goodbye to myself.

~Fin~


End file.
